


the opposite of a polygon

by wordbending



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Bisexual Otacon, Gay Solid Snake, M/M, Philanthropy Era, Pre-Relationship, Trans Male Character, post Shadow Moses, trans otacon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29357274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordbending/pseuds/wordbending
Summary: There's something under the surface of Snake, under his hard lines and harsh angles. Otacon can feel it, but Snake hides it away.Obviously, he concludes, that's why he's bad with women. Why else has Snake never been successful with any? For a top-secret super spy, he needs to up his game - he needs to learn to flirt.Fortunately for him, Otacon is a perfectly willing practice dummy.
Relationships: Otacon/Solid Snake
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	the opposite of a polygon

“Checked the Internet lately?” Otacon asked.

His only response was the sound of a electric razor whirring from the bathroom in their shared apartment, if a person could really call a concrete hut in the middle of Alaska an apartment.

“The memes...” Otacon continued. “Well, they’re calling them ‘memes’ now. It’s a term coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist. It means something that’s passed down, over generations. Not just DNA, but ideas... culture... language... society.” He leaned back from his laptop with a laugh. “That Richard Dawkins! What a guy.”

Again, there was no response but the whirr of an electric razor.

“Snake, are you listening?”

_Whirrrrrrrrr._

“I know you can hear me, Snake. Don’t pretend.”

An annoyed grunt. The razor clicked off.

“Sounds like a load of crap to me.”

“Memes?”

“Yeah.”

Otacon knew that he didn’t have to press. Snake continued onward like he had written an entire speech.

“We’re not bound by our genes _or_ our memes,” he said, over the sound of running water. “Culture, norms, even language... we can change those things. We can become different people than our parents, different people than our friends, different people than the people we live among. We can speak different tongues, love other people, transform into someone else. We can defy the gravity of our forebears.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment, Snake, really, but I was just going to show you a picture of a talking cat.”

“A talking cat?”

“Yeah. Look.”

Otacon waited for the faucet to turn off, and Snake emerged from around the corner of the bathroom. It was morning, and he hadn’t been on a mission of any kind in months, so he lacked his usual, serpentine gracefulness. Instead, he moved somewhat stiffly, like a mannequin.

Otacon turned his laptop around to face Snake. On the front of it was a picture of an overjoyed cat and text in Impact font.

“I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?” Snake repeated.

“Yeah. This is a ‘meme.’”

“I don’t get it.”

Annoyed, Otacon turned his laptop back around.

“You’re just grumpy, that’s all. You’ve been grumpy ever since...”

And he realized he had been about to stick his foot in his mouth, so he went silent.

Snake lowered his head, staring at him with his steely, almost blank gaze, like his eyes were black smears on a skull. Otacon couldn’t tell at all, no matter how hard he tried, whether Snake was angry at him or confused.

“Ever since...?”

Otacon waved his hand dismissively as if it would defuse the situation, which of course, it didn’t.

“You know. Ever since... Meryl.”

“Ever since Meryl left, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

Snake responded by walking into the room. He was shirtless, as usual in the morning. Otacon couldn’t help but stare at his sculpted abs, sculpted chest, as if someone had drawn lines onto an action figure rather than chiseled him from a block of marble.

He was insanely hot. Otacon would never _say that_ to him, of course, but you’d have to be blind not to see it.

“Well. Ever since she left, you have been... mopey.”

Snake pulled a shirt out of a pile of clothes on a shelf, the closest thing they had to a dresser. It was one of Otacon’s, which meant it was far too small on Snake’s beefy, square body, even if it was a little oversized on Otacon himself. It prominently displayed Eureka from _Eureka Seven,_ drawn in white stencil outlines on a black background, alongside Japanese kanji of the title.

“Mopey,” Snake repeated as he put on the shirt.

“I’m not wrong, am I?” Otacon replied. “Let me guess. Never had a girl break up with you before?”

“Not exactly.”

“So she wasn’t your first?”

“What is this, an interrogation?”

Otacon raised his hands defensively and almost knocked his laptop to the floor. He caught it clumsily and adjusted his glasses, although in the cold room, they were so foggy he could barely see out of them. He must have looked like Gendo Ikari, he thought.

“No, no! Of course not. But you must have other... you know, prospects? What about Mei-Ling?”

“I don’t think she’s interested in me.”

“...Naomi?”

“She tried to kill me.”

“Nastasha? She seems like your type.”

Snake stared blankly.

“...You do remember Nastasha, right?” Otacon offered.

“No, I just want to know what makes her ‘my type.’”

“Husky voice, smokes a lot, bad attitude? Likes guns?”

Snake didn’t smile.

“I mean, Snake, you’re, you know, a secret agent. You’re all... well. _Hnghr_ and smoking cigarettes and being the cool guy saying a one-liner while walking away from an explosion.” Otacon paused. “You could get any girl you wanted.”

“Doubt it.”

Otacon closed his laptop, and looked up at Snake through the fog in his glasses. “You know what I think? I think you’ve never been successful with women for one reason.”

Snake’s expression was still impossible to read, but Otacon thought he might have seen skepticism.

“You don’t know how to flirt. You don’t have ‘game’,” Otacon concluded.

Snake opened his mouth, and closed it again.

“I have plenty of games.”

“Oh, really?” Otacon replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Then why don’t you hit me with your best shot?”

“You want me to flirt with you?”

Otacon almost chuckled. “Oh, what, is the great Solid Snake too much of a man’s man to flirt with a man? Go ahead, pretend I’m a woman, if that makes it easier for you.”

He’d said that almost on autopilot, he realized. But it was kind of encouraging, actually, to think of how far back that part of him was - so far back he didn’t even consider it really a part of him anymore.

“Fine,” Snake grumbled. Still wearing the Eureka Seven shirt, he sat down on the flimsy, shredded couch, next to Otacon. Despite his weight, the couch barely moved as he sat down on it, as if Snake had even trained to be quiet and unnoticed for missions as difficult as “sitting on couches.”

Otacon faced him, and Snake faced him in return. He lowered his head...

And then he completely changed. He raised his head and smiled, and he slid closer to Otacon. A hand slithered up Otacon’s thigh, nearly touching his rear, and Otacon felt his face go crimson red, the color of ketchup. He backed away, instinctively, and tripped over himself so that he fell backwards onto the couch, so that he was laying splayed across it. Snake just climbed over top of him, his face inches from Otacon’s.

He could see Snake’s face in extraordinary detail now. It was like seeing two images at once - on the one hand, it was a face of all sharp angles and jagged lines, flat planes of smooth, perfect skin unblemished by even a single pore. On the other, it was like a painting, like messy ink lines forming an unmistakable illusion of a face, with high, angular cheekbones and sharp, piercing eyes. He felt like he was seeing not one, but two Snakes, their images coalescing together.

All he knew for sure is that his heart had never beat with this much ferocity.

Snake spoke, and Otacon watched his lips move.

“A scientist, huh? Maybe later, I’ll let you experiment on me.”

Otacon stared blankly at him, and then, before he could stop himself, he snickered. Laughter bubbled up from inside him, and then exploded out of him, like he’d just told a particularly bad joke and he couldn’t keep it in.

“Hahaha! Oh my _god!_ That’s the best you could come up with? You might as well have said my clothes would look good on the floor!”

“Hngh,” Snake grumbled, in what Otacon understood as the Snake grumble of disappointment.

“OK, OK,” Otacon acquiesced. “But that’s not your only pick-up line, right?”

Snake said nothing.

“Er. Is it...?”

“N-no!” Snake said. “I’ve... got others.”

Otacon couldn’t have helped it even if he'd tried. “What’s your next one?”

Again, Snake paused, and again, Snake smiled, placed a hand on Otacon’s thigh, and stared down at him, meeting his eyes with a gentle, intimate gaze. Again, Otacon felt his heart skip a beat as Snake’s lips moved and he said...

“What’s a girl like you...”

Otacon burst into laughter. “ _Oh my god!_ You’ve got to be joking - don’t even _finish_ that one!”

“ _Otacon!”_ Snake snapped, clearly exasperated. His smile gone, he raised himself back up from Otacon’s body and, like a petulant child, sat back against the couch and crossed his arms over his chest. “Look. I’m trying, but...”

Otacon raised himself back up to sit next to Snake, adjusting his glasses once again. Surprisingly, they seemed less foggy than before - he could see more clearly out of them now.

“But...?” Otacon repeated, carefully.

“But... I can’t see you as a woman.”

Otacon felt his cheeks grow warm. He stared at Snake, viewing him from the side, his head turned away. He could see him clearly now, his sharp, eagle-like nose, his jutting chin, the bangs of loose hair in the front of his mullet. He could see the freshly-shaven beard on his jawline, but even more than that, he could see his eyes. Not the hard eyes of a killer, but soft. Warm. Gentle.

Slowly, he reached out and let his fingers slide over Snake’s own, just barely tracing a path over Snake’s hand. Snake turned his head, and he could see his expression now, brows raised, confused and awkward and lacking the masculine, witty, “kept you waiting, huh” confidence that so many people saw as his whole being.

“Then why don’t you see me as a man?” Otacon said, softly.

Snake continued staring at him, looking completely out of his depth in a way he never was otherwise, and then he started to move, piece by piece. First, he lifted one of his hands and cupped Otacon’s cheek in it. Those calloused, scarred hands have killed men, Otacon knew, but Snake’s hand was only gentle as it rose up across Otacon’s cheek, caressing it and then holding it in his palm.

The truth is, Otacon thought, that the only times he’d been kissed were times he never wanted to think about again. He’d loved women, and he’d loved men, but it was rare they felt the same way, and sometimes, he’d found the inverse to be just as true. If love could bloom, even on the battlefield, then his garden was full of wilted roses.

This time, though, he doesn’t hesitate. He launched forward and closed the distance between him and Snake, slamming his lips against the other man’s. Snake froze like a caribou, but then he pulled his other hand free from Otacon’s, grabbed Otacon by the back of the head, and kissed him hard. It’s seconds before they fell backwards onto the couch, Otacon’s chest on top of Snake’s as Snake wrapped his fingers in his hair and kissed him like a starving animal, like he was going to devour him whole.

After a few moments, Snake broke away from the kiss, and Otacon broke away too, staring at Snake’s blushing, almost bashful face. Snake pulled him close again, his powerful arms wrapped around Otacon’s back, but his voice was as soft as his cigarette-gravel growl could be as he whispered, “Hal...”

“Dave,” Hal whispered back, into his ear. “Let’s take a trip to Jupiter.”

Dave chuckled.

“And you said my come-ons were bad."

* * *

Hal blinked awake, bleary and foggy-eyed. He reached over the side of the couch for his glasses (it wasn’t the first time he’d left them there), but the floor seemed further down. And the couch seemed... a little lumpier than he remembered.

And he was. Uh. Naked.

His eyes widened as everything came together, and he flailed around for his glasses before finding them on the floor, wrapped up in his Eureka Seven shirt, which was wrapped up in his underwear, which was wrapped up in Dave’s jeans. He clumsily put his glasses on his face and looked down.

He saw, below him, Dave. Dave was sleeping calmly, his breathing slow and steady. One of his naked, muscular arms was across his chest, while the other had fallen over the side of the couch and now hung limply at the side. Like this, Dave looked completely at peace with himself.

Hal smiled down at the other man. From here, he could see every scar - every mistake he’d ever made on a mission, from the ugly hills of grazed bullets, to the recolored flesh of burn wounds, to the jagged canyons of combat knives. But he could also see the man beneath the scars - not the legend, not the hero, but the man who believed in the simple goodness of humankind and fought to protect it.

He moved, carefully, to get off of Dave, so he could get dressed, make him some coffee or something for when he got up. But the moment he shifted the slightest amount, Dave’s arm snapped out, wrapped around him, and pulled him back against his chest. Hal nearly yelped, but he had to admit, he didn’t think he actually really minded.

“Hal...” Dave mumbled, under his breath.

“Are you awake, Dave?” Hal whispered back.

“Hal... I...” Dave mumbled, again, but then he went silent again, the only sound he made his slow, steady breathing.

Hal smiled and rested his head against Dave’s, closing his eyes. He could sleep like this for a while, he thought. It was so much like a dream - why should he have to wake up?

After five seconds, his eyes shot open.

_Oh my god. Snake is gay._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my friend William for reading and inspiring this, and thank you to Holly on Twitter for inspiring me so much over the years.


End file.
